Suit filed against Joy Tsin Lau over February food poisoning

Citing a "sordid history of health code violation and food-borne illness," one victim of the food-poisoning outbreak that sickened 100 lawyers and law students in February has filed suit against the Chinatown restaurant where she contracted a virulent strain of norovirus.

Lawyer Samantha F. Green attended a Feb. 27 banquet celebrating the Lunar New Year at Joy Tsin Lau, the venerable dim sum palace at 10th and Race Streets.

Early the next morning, Green began to feel ill and raced to the emergency room at Pennsylvania Hospital in agonizing pain, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. Following nine hours of vomiting, she was unable to consume anything but bananas and tea for four days.

"It is no surprise that Joy Tsin Lau caused such a large food-borne illness outbreak," Green's lawyer, Richard Kim, wrote in the complaint. "The restaurant has been cited for 249 health code violations by the Philadelphia Department of Health in the past six years."

A representative of the restaurant declined to comment.

During several recent inspections, city records show, health inspectors discovered mouse droppings throughout the restaurant's kitchen and a lack of soap and paper towels in the employee restroom.

Just 17 days before the banquet that sickened the lawyers, a city health department restaurant inspector declared that management practices at Joy Tsin Lau "have allowed unacceptable public health or food-safety conditions."

Because the health department withholds inspection reports from the public for 30 days, none of the norovirus victims could have read that assessment.

Four days after the mass food-poisoning, another city inspector found 41 violations that indicated a chronic inability to adhere to basic food safety standards.

The city has threatened to shut Joy Tsin Lau four times since 2009. In its most recent complaint, dated May 6, the city described the restaurant as "a serious and immediate hazard" and "public health nuisance."

A hearing regarding the May 6 complaint was scheduled in common pleas court for July 6, but was canceled, the city's chief deputy solicitor, Andrew Ross, said in an e-mail on Monday.

"The [city health department] did cite the restaurant at the most recent inspection for three illness risk factors, but determined it did not warrant closure at this time," Ross said.